What is “Sustainably Produced” Wine?
Welcome to Wild Wines first blog post!
You're visiting this page because you love good wine and care about where and how it is made. You're environmentally conscious, and what is happening with climate change has strengthened your commitment to seeking sustainably produced goods. We share this ethos with you, as do our incredible farmers and winemakers.
Respecting Nature | Supporting Integrity
Wild Wines is committed to sourcing from winemakers who respect nature to make honest wines. They take the extra steps, taking significant risks, to choose minimal intervention in their approach to sustainably producing wines.
So, what is "sustainably produced" wine?
Are these just trendy marketing buzzwords? The short answer is: No. (After all, this is what puts the wild in Wild Wines)! A sustainable winery keeps the entire production environmentally friendly — everything from vineyard biodiversity to packaging, waste management and general operations.
What makes a wine organic?
Organic wines are very simply wines made from organically grown grapes. For grapes to be organic, a winemaker must work sustainability in the vineyard and the cellar. Now, organic doesn't mean any additives. Some additives, including yeast, animal enzymes, and egg whites, get the okay in organic wines. So confusingly, organic doesn't necessarily mean a wine is vegan, but it is made without harsh chemicals.
Organic wines can be certified in some countries, but sustainable farming rules are not always cut and dried. It is up to the winemaker to do their best to follow guidelines, and purveyors like us do the legwork to ensure the wine we sell is directly sourced from winemakers truly walking the sustainability walk.
Wild Winemakers make wines in tandem with nature without using artificial chemicals. One needs only to walk the vines to see the difference. In most cases, it can starkly contrast the overly manicured rows of its neighbour's vineyard if they use conventional methods of synthetic fertilisers and spraying. In an organic vineyard, you find rich biodiversity among the vines — plants, flowers, bees and butterflies and sometimes geese or lambs let loose to eat bugs or worms. Wild Wines are, in every sense of the word, terroir-driven wines.
The discussion of sustainable viticulture can lead down a rabbit hole of subjects, from what constitutes a low-sulphite wine to what the moon has to do with biodynamic winemaking principles. These are all topics we can't wait to uncover for you in the future of the Wild Wines Blog. The important takeaway in our first post is the assurance that the wine you are drinking from us is directly from winemakers who Respect Nature and Support Integrity.
Pictured: Vina Echeverria. The Echeverria family are committed to social responsibility. They have been awarded sustainable status by the Wines of Chile Organization, working with a model of micro viticulture; each plot, no more than half a hectare, is identified according to its terroir and micro-climate and planted accordingly.
Note: In the Wild Wines brochure, we let you know if each wine is: Organic (certified or converting to certified), Biodynamic (certified or converting to certified), Unfiltered, Low S02, Vegan or hand-harvested.
